The fundamental rule of Copyright law is that facts and ideas are not copyrightable, it is only the creative expression of such ideas and facts that is rewarded by law, by conferring a privilege to exclusively exploit such expression for a limited time. However, not all expression are accorded protection under the Copyright Law. The law affords protection to expressions that are fixed in a medium and are ―original. Section 13 of the Copyright Act provides that ―original, literary, artistic,…
“I wish to go on living even after my death”
-Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
This was just one of the famous lines that Anne Frank wrote in her diary - ‘Kitty’, which it was fondly referred to as by Anne when she penned her thoughts into it. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl or more famously known as the Diary of Anne Frank was a journal or a diary of a young Jewish girl…
The concept of fair dealing is statutorily entrenched in Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957. What fair dealing does is that it permits certain acts with respect to copyrighted works, which otherwise would have constituted as infringement. The concept of fair dealing found in the UK copyright law as well as the Indian copyright law, is much more restrictive that its US counterpart, fair use. While the Indian law provides a specific list of fair dealing acts and purposes,…
The objective of non–voluntary licensing is two-fold. First, to overcome the difficulty of locating the correct owner of the copyrighted work and getting an individual license from him and second is to avoid the creation of monopoly of copyright owners. The result the state looks at achieving from this provision is ensuring public dissemination and authors' compensation and avoiding market monopoly.
The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 has incorporated a new section into Chapter VI of the Copyright Act, which…
This post briefs three copyright cases that provide insights into copyright issues with respect to content posted on Social Media platforms.
Scrabble v. Scrabulous
In 2008, two Indians Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, launched a Facebook App called 'Scrabulous.' It was a word game similar to Scrabble. Initially Mattel, and later Hasbrow, right holders of the Scrabble game sued the Agarwalla brothers for both copyright and trade mark infringement at the Delhi High Court.
After reviewing the facts, the Delhi High…
‘Plagiarism’ is not a foreign word to the entertainment industry. It is not uncommon in Bollywood to dress ‘plagiarism’ as ‘inspiration’. Studies show that nearly eight out of every ten Bollywood movies produced is “inspired” by one or more Hollywood films. Bollywood has time and again faced criticism for its “blatant copying” of Hollywood storylines and for having taken undue advantage of the unfamiliarity of the Indian audiences with respect to international films. Although very few western studios attempted to…
This post exhibits the statistics of IP litigation in India in the past decade.
The following table displays the statistics that were arrived at after conducting a search on Manupatra . It tabulates the estimated number of decisions passed by the Supreme Court and High Courts with respect to patents, trademarks and copyrights in the past decade.
IP Decisions Passed by SC and HCs from 2004 – 2014
Year
Number of Decided Cases for Patent
Number of Decided Cases for Trademark
Number of…
This presentation was delivered by Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala at GNLU as a part of the entertainment law course offered for LLB students. The presentation covers:
• Introduction to copyright law and philosophy of copyright law;
• Copyrightability - Idea/Expression Dichotomy, Ideas and Expressions, Originality, Modicum of Creativity - tests;
• Abstraction of expressions from ideas, public domain works, facts, common scenes, concepts, themes, etc;
• Copyrightable Subject Matter - Works protected;
• Rights granted to each type of work, and differences in rights;
•…
This presentation was delivered by Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala at GNLU as a part of the entertainment law course offered for LLB students. The presentation covers:
Meaning of intellectual property;
Nature of protection offered by IP;
Different species of Intellectual Property, and their relevance to entertainment industry:
Role of Patents in Entertainment Business;
Copyrights and Entertainment;
Trade Marks and their relevance to entertainment industry;
Industrial Designs/Design Patents and their role in licensing and merchandizing;
Geographical Indications and their role in entertainment;
Trade Secrets in the Entertainment Industry;
Confidential Information…
First there was the selfie and then came the Monkey Selfie. Who can forget the series of selfies taken by the six-year-old crested macaque Naruto, who was singlehandedly responsible for the selfie evolution. A place which evens the selfie stick couldn’t take. To jog you memory, here is a brief back ground- English photographer David John Slater, on a trip to the Indonesian National Park, had left his camera without any supervision. The camera landed in the hands of Naruto,…